Wednesday 12th March 2014, 4.30pm - 5.30pm
4.21, New Academic Building, LSE
Steven Alpern
Professor of Operational Research, Warwick Business School
Personal Profile
Abstract:
This joint work with Tom Lidbetter considers searching a network in a new way, which we call "expanding search". In the discrete case, where the Hider is restricted to hiding at one of the k nodes of a network Q, such a search is a sequence of distinct nodes n(1), n(2),...,n(k), where n(1) is a given 'root' or 'starting' node, and every other node n(i) is adjacent to a previously searched node n(j), for some j<i. We consider both the Bayesian problem where the Hider distribution is known, and the search game where the Hider picks his node. The payoff is the expected search time. We also consider the case where the Hider can hide at any point on the network (where arcs have given lengths).